Jensens survey of the old testament adam 33

p It is not known which was the rst Old Testament book to be written If Moses was the earliest Bible author, then there was no Scripture before around 1500 B.C Gleason L Archer, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, p 15 Read this same source for a good discussion of the inadequacies of oral tradition as a sole transmitter of God’s special revelation to man These were the exceptions, written in Aramaic: Genesis 31:47; Jeremiah 10:11; Daniel 2:40—7:28; Ezra 4:8—6:18; 7:12-26 Vowels were added to copies of the Old Testament around A.D 600-800, to help preserve the pronunciation of the Hebrew words One of God’s reasons for not preserving the original autographs may have been man’s proneness to worship material objects Also, even if a genuine biblical autograph existed today, many people would still doubt any proofs offered of its genuineness 10 Even Bibles printed in the modern twentieth century have printers’ errors! 11 Among the major extant Hebrew manuscripts of this period are: Cairo Codex (A.D 895); Leningrad Codex of the Prophets (916); Aleppo Codex (930); Leningrad Old Testament (entire Old Testament) (1008) 12 Archer, pp 18-19 13 Psalms was the rst and longest book of the Writings, and so the name may have been used to represent the entire section 14 At times Hebrew Bibles have appeared with minor variations from this arrangement 16 F.F Bruce, The Books and the Parchments, p.92 17 Consult a Bible dictionary for descriptions of these feasts 19 The chronological pattern is not always followed in this order For example, the account of Esther is between Ezra and Nehemiah, and the books of Chronicles parallel much of the books of Kings 20 The Roman numeral LXX (seventy) and the Latin word Septuaginta (seventy) were assigned to this version because of a story which said that seventy-two translators were engaged in the original work Actually, the name Septuagint was not assigned to the whole Greek Old Testament until the time of the Church scholar Origen (early third century A.D.) 21 G T Manley, The New Bible Handbook, p 19 22 In the Old Testament, the name Israel usually refers to all of God’s chosen people During the years of the divided kingdom, however, it more often refers only to the Northern Kingdom The context will usually indicate which meaning is intended 23 The semicircular strip of habitable land from Canaan to Babylonia has been appropriately called the Fertile Crescent It was the center of civilization from man’s beginning to the golden age of Greece in the fth century The two key waterways of the long Mesopotamian Valley are the Tigris and Euphrates rivers 24 The name Palestine is derived from the Hebrew eres Pelistim, meaning “land of the Philistines.” Philistia was a small region in the southwest, but by the fth century B.C the name was applied to the entire land of Canaan 25 The above observations are based on the reasonable assumption that Palestine’s climate has not changed much since Old Testament times 26 Although Syria’s domain was not geographically extensive, that nation is studied here with the other four because of its direct relation to the Northern Kingdom of Israel for two centuries 27 The blocks show general eras of ascendancy Within an era, a nation could experience temporary decline, depending on such factors as who was king 28 The duration of Israel’s stay in Egypt is R.C  ... was the center of civilization from man’s beginning to the golden age of Greece in the fth century The two key waterways of the long Mesopotamian Valley are the Tigris and Euphrates rivers 24 The. .. T Manley, The New Bible Handbook, p 19 22 In the Old Testament, the name Israel usually refers to all of God’s chosen people During the years of the divided kingdom, however, it more often refers... (930); Leningrad Old Testament (entire Old Testament) (1008) 12 Archer, pp 18-19 13 Psalms was the rst and longest book of the Writings, and so the name may have been used to represent the entire section